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[nRST PRIZE ESSAY, 1916, ON "THE CAUSES THAT LED TO THE WAR BETWEEN 
THE STATES," IN THE LATHAM PRIZE CONTEST, WHICH WAS INAUGURATED BY THE 
SONS OF CONFEDERATE VETERANS IN 1915 THROUGH THE GENEROSITY OF MRS. T. 
J. LATHAM, OF MEMPHIS, TENN.] 



BY 
LLOYD T. EVERETT 



YEXID PUBUSHING COMPANY 

BOX 250. BALLSTON, VA. 

1916. 



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Was It Anti-Slavery? 

[First prize essay. 1Q16, on "The Causes That Led to the War be- 
tween the States," in the Latham Prize Contest, which was inaugu- 
rated by the Sons of Confederate Veterans in 1915 through the gen- 
erosity of Mrs. T. J. Latham, of Memphis, Tenn.] 

BY LLOYD T. EVERETT, EALLSTON, VA. 

When the smoke of the American Revolution Hfted, it dis- 
covered to the world a straggling line of thirteen petty re- 
publics fringing for a thousand miles and more the w^estern 
shore of the Atlantic. Only comparatively homogeneous in 
blood, these stripling commonwealths were varied in latitude 
and diversified in temperament, tendencies, and material in- 
terests. But recently brought together in one common con- 
test against a common oppressor across the seas, harmony 
dwindled and discord grew between them in proportion as the 
late joint struggle for independence receded into the past. 
Grouped, regrouped, and countergrouped into large and small 
States, free-labor and slave-labor States, planter and sea- 
trading States, States with wide stretches of Western hinter- 
land and States without, the b ker's dozen of mutually jealous 
little Minervas eyed each other furtively from the very start. 

Even during the war for independence little Maryland held 
up the Articles of Confederation from unanimous adoption 
and actual operation until assured of. a satisfactory disposi- 
tion of the vast Western-land grants held by Virginia and 
others of the large States. It appears that as early as 1786 



many in the North and East favored an agreement with Spain 
for closing the Mississippi as a trade outlet for the scattered 
but growing settlements beyond the mountains. New Eng- 
land particularly (herself cut ofif from Western expansion by 
her geographical position) was found ever hostile to Southern 
and Western extensions. Bear this fact well in mind in trac- 
ing the later course of what came to be the great inter- 
sectional controversy. Again, many and significant evidences 
of jealousy between various States or groups of States and 
between the two great sections of South and North are 
found in the debates of the general and State conventions 
that framed and that adopted the Federal Constitution of 
1787-89. No wonder that Washington in his farewell address 
considered the new Constitution and his "confederated re- 
public" thereunder as an "experiment." 

One of the "compromises of the Constitution" resulted from 
a "deal" between certain States of sea-trading, slave-trans- 
porting New England and some of the Southern States by 
which the proposed provision requiring a two-thirds vote in 
Congress in matters regulating commerce (including sea car- 
riage) was defeated, and the importation of slaves from Afri- 
ca should not be abolished before the year 1808. 

There was pronounced opposition in New England to the 
purchase of the great Louisiana territory by Jefiferson's ad- 
ministration in 1803. Like opposition from the same quarter 
developed some eight years later to the admission of the 
southernmost portion of this Louisiana country as the State 
of Louisiana ; and Representative Josiah Quincy, of Massa- 
chusetts, uttered from the floor of Congress his famous threat 
of secession by "some" of the States, "amicably if they can, 
violently if they must." 

The War of 1812 gave occasion for yet further expressions 
of disaffection up New England way. The Federalist party, 

[2] 



with its stronghold there, had become hopelessly ousted from 
power by the Democrats, led by Jefferson and other Southern 
men. Moreover, the trade restrictions resulting from the war 
and other policies of the Democrats bore hard upon New 
England's sea-carrying interests, although Mr. Wilson re- 
marks in his "History of the American People" that the 
planters of the South were even harder hit. In the midst of 
this war the memorable Hartford Convention of New Eng- 
landers was held as an angry protest against the war and the 
administration. This convention squinted toward secession ; 
and about the same time Daniel Webster on the floor of the 
House of Representatives, speaking in opposition to one of 
the war measures, threatened disunion in no uncertain tones. 

A few years after the war the question of Western expan- 
sion was" again up. This was in 1819-21, when "the Missouri 
questions" shook the country from end to end. New England 
and the North generally opposed the admission of this new 
Southern and Western State. For the first time slavery as a 
distinctly sectional issue came to the fore. If the West must 
be settled after all, the North and the Northeast were deter- 
mined to keep as much of it as possible for themselves and 
for white labor as against the South and black labor. The 
dispute raged long and hot, involving many legislative pro- 
posals and party maneuvers. 

It is very commonly supposed that the slave-labor State 
of Missouri and the free-labor State of Maine were together 
admitted under the "Missouri Compromise," by which Mis- 
souri was allowed to come in with slavery ; but no more slave- 
labor States were to be admitted from the Louisiana Purchase 
north of latitude thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes. This is 
not correct. Under such a proposal Maine was admitted; but 
Northern members afterwards voted against the admission of 
Missouri with slavery, and her admission was delayed another 

[3] 



year. (See tlie history of this most informingly discussed 
in A. H. Stephens's "History of the United States.") 

The aged JefTerson, himself an abolitionist from principle, 
decried this injection of politico-moral questions into inter- 
sectional politics. He said it smote upon his ears "like a fire 
bell in the night'' and could mean only bloodshed and dis- 
union. Jefferson pointed out that true friends of the negroes 
should be glad to see them diffused over a larger stretch of 
country. That this "anti-slavery" stand of the North in Con- 
gress was economic and political, not moral and philanthropic, 
is manifest from a study of the laws of those times in North- 
ern and Northwestern States aimed against free negroes there. 

For a few years after the admission of Missouri the ques- 
tion of Western expansion as a sectional issue slept, then 
broke forth again at the time of the nullification crisis, 1830- 
33. Senator Foot, of Connecticut, had introduced a resolu- 
tion looking to the restriction of the survey and sale of West- 
ern lands. The South and the West attacked it as designed 
to retard the development of the West and to keep the factory 
laborers of the North from emigrating. Too, the moneyed 
interests (centered in the North) were accused of wishing to 
maintain a permanent, interest-bearing national debt. Manu- 
factures had received a great impetus during the trade trou- 
bles accompanying the second war with Britain, and "pro- 
tective" tariffs had been demanded by and conceded to the 
manufacturers. These were mostly in the middle States, but 
by 1830 were quite numerous in New England also. 

By her determined stand in the nullification crisis South 
Carolina, reenforced by widespread sympathy in other South- 
ern States, forced a radical reduction in the tariff under the 
famous compromise of 1833. She thereby incurred the last- 
ing enmity of New England and of much of the North gen- 
erally. Up to this date the abolitionist crusade had made no 

[4] 



great headway in the North, kast of all in New England. 
But it was in the midst of these nullification debates in Con- 
gress that John Quincy Adams uttered the significant threat 
that if "protection" of manufacturers was not to be given to 
the North, then the South ought not to expect continued pro- 
tection of negro slavery. It was from this very juncture that 
abolitionism and "free-soilism" began to make marked growth 
throughout the North. Except for a brief period in the early 
forties, a low or lowered tarifif prevailed from nullification 
until the war of iS6i. 

In the nullification debates we find the agricultural South 
and West, for the most part, standing together against the 
common hostility of the mercantile North and East. But a 
change soon took place. The North found that the West was 
bound to grow, anyhow. Largely increased immigration from 
Europe began about this time to pour into Northern ports- 
and to furnish the needed cheap labor for Northern mills ; 
the West was steadily beguiled with the prospect of vast 
"internal improvements" (roads, aids to navigation, etc.), at 
the expense of the Federal treasury. These improvements 
called for large revenue and so lent added plausibility to the 
denland for a high tarifif on imports. Thus long before 1861 
the Northeast and the Northwest became allied against the 
South. But few Europeans came into the South, where the 
immigrant laborers would find themselves in competition with 
slave labor. Thus the North's population grew faster than 
the South's. Also these Continental Europeans were imbued 
with the ideas of strong monarchical, centralistic governments, 
and so were the more ready to embark upon a war of in- 
vasion and conquest (when the issue with the South should 
once be finally drawn) and thus help overwhelm the minority, 
though a considerable one, in the North opposed to any such 
repudiation of the principles of our Declaration of Independ- 

[5] 



ence and our historical, constitutional rights. Lincoln in his 
war of coercion derived much aid and comfort from the Ger- 
man immigrants with their ideals of blood and iron. 

Meanwhile many in the North had opposed the annexation 
of Texas, also that of other Southwestern territory, resulting 
from the war with Mexico. The Kansas-Nebraska contro- 
versy gave rise to the Republican party in the 'fifties, which 
demanded that the South keep out of the common territories 
which had been acquired by the common blood and treasure of 
the South and North alike. Horace Greeley, one of the Re- 
publican leaders, was slow to be drawn into the professed anti- 
slavery agitation, because, as he himself said in 1845, he found 
too much slavery in the North. In the factory districts there 
the women and children toiled thirteen and fourteen hours a 
day, and the factory hands dwelt in the company's houses and 
worshiped God at the company's church. 

The new party in its first national platform (1856) did not 
declare for a high or "protective" tarifif. It polled a good 
vote that year and, thereby encouraged, declared for such a 
tariff in i860, thus appealing to both the land-hungry of the 
West and the bounty-hungry of the East. Meanwhile the 
John Brown raid into Virginia, seeking to incite the negroes 
to war with the Southern whites, had occurred in 1859, and 
widespread sympathy with and for him was expressed in the 
North, a sympathy doubtless fanned by Harriet Beecher 
Stowe's stirring novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," of this period. 
The Democrats and the Constitutionalist-Union men split into 
three tickets in i860, thus allowing the Republicans to elect 
their candidate by a majority of the electoral votes, though 
by a minority of nearly a million of the popular vote. 

Most of the Southern States then withdrew, and the war 
of coercion followed. A high tariff was promptly enacted 
as a "war measure" to raise revenue for waging war on the 

[6] 



South, which was to be retained in the Union inter alia to 
furnish cheap raw materials for Northern manufacturers and 
perhaps an outlet for the Northwest via the Mississippi. This 
tariflf was repeatedly increased during the four years of war. 
Yet, despite this need of revenue, the free-homestead act of 
1862 was passed, thus materially reducing the income from 
the disposal of the new lands of the West. And with it all 
a huge public debt was piled up. 

Some one has aptly remarked that the Northern writers 
have been too prone to ascribe moral causes to the great war 
of the 'sixties and Southern writers too much inclined to lay 
it to a difference of view of constitutional rights; that, in 
truth, the causes were primarily economic. Commercial and 
economic questions have caused most of the great wars of 
history, and human nature is the same in America as else- 
where. In his farewell address Washington warned against 
belief in disinterested kindness in national conduct; Mr. Taft 
has spoken to like effect. Tariff, Western lands, immigra- 
tion, the desire in certain selfishly interested quarters for a 
big permanent public debt — all these had more to do with 
our great war than the historians have usually told us. 

[7] 



Bibliography. 
Annals of Congress, 1S13-14; Congressional Speeches of 
Josiah Quincy, 1874; Brown and Strauss's "A Dictionary of 
American Politics; John R. Commons's Horace Greeley and 
the Working-Class Origin of the Repiiblican Party; W. J. 
Bromwcll's History of Immigration to the United States; 
Immigration Legislation, Senate Document 758, Sixty-First 
Congress, third session ; E. W. R. Ewing's Legal and His- 
torical Status of the Dred Scptt Decision; Register of De- 
bates in Congress, Vols. 8 and 9; A. B. Hart's Slavery and 
Abolition. (Vol. 16 of The American Nation, a History) ; Dr. 
Curry's Southern States of the American Union; The South 
in the Building of the Nation, particularly Vols. 4 and 5 ; 
Franklin Pierce's Tariff and the Trusts; F. W. Taussig's The 
Tariff History of the United States; the writer's A Titan's 
War (a study of the Nullification Crisis and "Great Dehatcs" 
of 1830-33, MS.), Chapter 3: A. IT. Stephens's History of the 
United States; The War Day by Day, Washington (D. C.) 
Herald, March 13, 1914; The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 

1829, Vol. 4. 

[S] 



Confederate Pamphlets 



Davis, Lincoln, and the Kaiser 

On National and International Ethics 
1861 and 1914 

35 Cents per copy. 2 Copies, 50 Cents 



Was It Anti-Slavery? 

On the Causes of the War of 1 86 1 
S. C V. Prize Essay. 1916 

25 Cents per copy. 2 Copies, 40 Cents 



Living Confederate Principles 

An Address by Lloyd T. Everett 

to the Confederate Veterans of 

Washington, D. C. 

50 Cents per copy. 2 Copies, 75 Cents 



All Three Pamphlets for One Dollar 
Stamps or Money Order 

Yexid Publishing Company 

p. O. Box 250 
BALLSTON, VIRGINIA 



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